Monday, February 11, 2013

In light of the recent news that Left For Dead are not only going to record a 7" with new material, but that they are essentially a full fledged band again, I ran a few quick questions by Chris Colohan to find out how it all came about.

Also, in the near future, I will be doing an extensive retrospective interview with Chris that will cover his entrance into hardcore and the timeline of all his bands.

In 2004, it seemed like the final nail was in the coffin of Left For
Dead. When did A389 approach you about re-releasing the discography and
playing the fest?

Yeah, we thought so too, and hadn't talked
much since then until recently. I was in Baltimore last summer when
Burning Love was out with Black Breath and Dom came to hang out. He's an
old friend and was still living around here circa LFD. He just asked me
on a long shot what it would take to get LFD to play, kinda joking but
not, and there really wasn't any good reason not to do it just
for kicks, and everything rolled out from there. We had never played
outside our immediate area, and never in the US, so Baltimore seemed
like a fitting place to break the ice. And added to that, the time since
even that reunion, 9 years, is whole waves of kids later. There's kids
that weren't around even at the time of the 2004 show, let alone 1996,
so it seemed worth
doing again for that reason too. Maybe every decade (or 4 generations
of hardcore kid) we'll do it. Bigger Picture Hardcore. Did it take much to get everyone on board?

No,
we were just pretty far out of each others' loop was all. But Jeff and I
got talking and were on the same page with everything and our ideas for
it. Curtis and Jeff live in Hamilton and Joel and I in Toronto, so we
just had to do some acrobatic scheduling to practice, which despite the 6
months heads up ended up going down mostly the week before the shows,
the first complete one being the day of the first show. Pretty much like
old times.

Considering the conditions in which Left For Dead material was recorded, did you think much could be done with a remix?

Hah.
No, I definitely didn't think it could be made to sound much better
considering the quality of it. Also, for what it is, it wouldn't want it to sound too polished. But somehow they did it
just right, it's sharper and you can distinguish the riffs in there. I was impressed by that turd-polishing.

Given that you had already announced a 7" worth of new material, who then brought up the idea of continuing as a band?

We
didn't really plan it, I think we were all going by how the weekend
went and how it felt. And when we got there it was all just old friends
hanging out and raising hell like old times and all the shit and
downsides between us was just water under the bridge. Considering all
our love of and opinions about what hardcore is and isn't, it seems kind
of fake to play reunion shows if you still couldn't back it up in real
time or write songs like that. Any monkey can do karaoke of their own
younger selves but if that's all you're going to do with it, it makes
kind of a joke of it. If the weekend had felt like it wasn't true to
what LFD was it would be different but no, we came out of it wanting to
write more, faster,
nastier songs and pick up where we left off, whatever that ends up
meaning or producing. There's definitely no shortage of things around us
in 2013 that we're genuinely misanthropic about.

What does it feel like to be adding new material to a band whose original output was written 17 years ago?

It's
fine. We wrote almost all those songs in an afternoon, it's pretty much
our thing to do what we want with. Just like before, we're not gonna
overthink the process, just hit record and see what comes out. We all
still play in hardcore bands and haven't stopped since, so the 16 years
doesn't mean much.

Does Jeff still passionately loathe America?

Ohhhh yeah.

Any closing comments or reflections on Canada getting rid of the penny?